Tag: Fitzgerald River National Park

This series final chapter reveals the identity of the “red flecks” in the preceding post’s landscape view.

There’s no finer location in which to experience the two relevant species in their natural state than Fitzgerald River National Park’s East Mount Barren.

If you wish to enjoy a natural experience of them (both species are now popular with gardeners) the only places where you can have that experience are all in or near to Fitzgerald River National Park.

Pictured above and below: Hakea victoria, known as Royal Hakea.

Arguably, it has the most spectacularly variegated leaves of any plant on earth; the individuals in this post are by no means unusually splendid examples.

Fitzgerald River National Park is its stronghold, and all naturally occurring Royal Hakeas are within easy driving distance of “the Fitz”.

Most photos in this post were taken on a morning ascent of East Mount Barren on 21 September 2021.

The featured image has not been photoshopped; it is not a composite of monochrome and full colour.

Such juxtapositions of the “drab/dark/subdued/almost monochrome” with the “brilliantlly/exquisitely/flamboyantly colourful” are commonplace in southwestern Australia.

Here, some of the world’s poorest soils are in fact the key to an astonishing, highly diverse array of endemic flora.

In global terms, the relevant “mountain” is in fact a relatively modest hill, rising 311 metres above the nearby ocean.

However, if you love wildflowers, this hill has few peers, anywhere…